It is a day for celebration, a day to remember, a day to salute, a day to glory in not only The Great Gretzky but in the great sport with which he has become synonymous.
IT IS less a retirement than a Royal Abdication.
When Wayne Gretzky leaves the ice for the final time early this evening at Madison Square Garden to complete a 21-year professional career that has established standards for success and grace for every professional athlete who follows, the Country of Hockey will have lost its crown prince.
Today, for Rangers-Penguins, No. 99 is throwing the game one final, grand party. It is a day for celebration, a day to remember, a de Great Gretzky but in the great sport with which he has become synonymous.
It is a day never to forget, different of course for the Rangers, their fans and this city than June 14, 1994, but one of monumental historical significance. One which we’ve been invited to share.
It is a day for cheers only, a day to set aside grievances and grudges. There will be time beginning as soon as tomorrow to analyze the serious issues regarding The Great Gretzky’s departure from the Broadway stage, but that’s not necessary today. This afternoon is a party.
This afternoon before the puck is dropped, before history reluctantly takes hockey’s favorite son, Gretzky is throwing us one more gala. Everyone involved in the on-ice ceremony, will be there at The Great One’s invitation. It would be rude not to welcome every one of his guests onto the ice with open arms and hearts. This is a day where protest is out of place, where booing is boorish.
Gretzky’s guests are the Garden’s guests. Gretzky’s guests, every one of them, deserve welcome and thanks from the audience. This is a day to celebrate No. 99.
Business tomorrow, pleasure today. *
IT WAS June 15, 1978, and what was then called the NHL amateur draft had concluded at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. I was sharing a cab to Dorval Airport with Islanders GM Bill Torrey, who had news that on that day the WHA Indianapolis Racers had announced the signing of a 17-year-old named Wayne Gretzky to a professional contract.
“A publicity stunt,” Torrey told me. “He certainly couldn’t play in our league; he’d get killed.”
This was not one of the astute Torrey’s most astute evaluations. *
MARK Messier is coming back to the Garden today, invited personally Friday night by Gretzky. It is, of course, where he belongs.
It is difficult to believe that an event even of this magnitude – really, it is nothing less than Babe Ruth retiring, and those who resist that notion do so because they simply do not understand the culture of hockey and The Great One’s place in its pantheon – could bring The Captain onto the Garden ice in concert with Ranger and MSG management.
But today, like the Gretzky billiard-like passes to himself off the net that are impossible until he has shown us very differently, even that is possible.
Even Mike Keenan is desperately trying to find a ticket into the Garden for this afternoon. *
NO. 99 will not be retired by the Rangers today, even if it is retired in every building in the NHL. At Gretzky’s direction, it will not be hung by the Rangers until No. 11 gets to the rafters first.
The pre-game festivities and presentations will begin between 2:45 and 3 p.m. More than 400 media credentials had been granted as of yesterday afternoon, with requests still flooding the Ranger PR office. During all television timeouts throughout the game, the scoreboard will play video highlight clips. After the game, too, the Garden will present a video retrospective.
Gretzky will wear three jerseys this afternoon, one per period. He will use 40 sticks. With one of them, he might even score the 895th goal of his NHL career, the 1,073d goal of his major-league lifetime.
“If I don’t score a goal, it’s not going to kill me,” The Great One said yesterday. “And if I get a hat trick, I’m not going to change my mind.” *
I HAVE been working the story all week, consumed professionally, too busy to take part in the moment. It is the way journalists live. It is a story The Post had alone, a story I was proud to have had.
I would rather have read somewhere else that Gretzky had decided to play one more season than to have been the one to write that he would not. *
IT WAS the last practice of a hockey life that began 35 years ago when The Great Toddler was three. It ended at Rye yesterday afternoon with an informal team picture on the ice that everyone wanted to be a part of. Different people were snapping pictures with their own cameras. And then Todd Harvey with his fractured right thumb still in a cast, volunteered to snap one for posterity.
“Don’t hurt your hand,” Gretzky told him.
Previously, before practice, Harvey had given him a mock gift – a framed collage of 20 Harvey hockey cards that has been sitting in the oft-injured winger’s locker for the last two weeks.
“Twenty cards, Harv; that’s one for each game you played this year,” Gretzky teased.
Harvey asked John Muckler if he could play this afternoon. The coach of course said no. Still, the Heartbeat Kid, who became very close to Gretzky this year, is going to skate in warmups.
“I’m not missing it,” said Harvey. *
THERE are 100 of them in existence, specially crafted fine leather chairs in the shape of a giant baseball glove. One rests in the office of George Steinbrenner. Another yesterday sat in the Ranger locker room at Rye, ordered especially from Italy by the team, and presented as a gift to The Great One.
At the foot of the chair is a plaque. It reads: “Thank You for Your Passion. From the New York Rangers, 1998-99. April 18, 1999.”
“The players had heard me brag that I loved the chair in Mr. Steinbrenner’s office,” Gretzky said. “When they gave me the gift, I was pretty emotional. I went into the back room after that. I was a little bit teary.”
There was an additional gift, as well, given to No. 99 by the team’s training staff: a lifetime gold pass from Major League Baseball for admission to all games for “Wayne Gretzky and one.”
“I’m a fan,” Gretzky said when asked which team he roots for. “But here in New York, I’m a Yankee fan.” *
THE Great Gretzky is hockey, and all that it represents. He is the culture of 6 a.m. practices for Squirts, of families who organize their lives around youth hockey practices and travel, of athletes who remain by far the most humble and grounded in professional sports. He has brought honor to his game, to his parents, to his family, to Canada and to the U.S.
He is going to be missed in ways that cannot yet quite be fathomed.
Today we celebrate him, his career, and the Country of Hockey that he has ruled so benevolently.
Thanks, Gretz.